In a Dropout Role
by Mike Cohen
part 1
All this happened in the month that high school ended in 1961. My oldest friend Barbara Wagner — I called her Bar — began pushing at me to go to the prom with Louis Floyd; her choice, not mine. I could care less about the prom. I’d rather go to a movie any day instead of some dance, but Bar would not let up.
“You listen to me, Marilyn Martin,” Bar said. “Louis is a smart one, even though he’s a little quiet.”
Bar normally called me Mar, so I knew she expected me to do what she asked. I didn’t say no, and not surprisingly, Louis called to ask me out on a double date the next Saturday with Bar and her regular, Jerry Prebe. That was Bar all the way, assembling her team in advance for the prom.
When I told Mom that a new guy had asked me out, I added that I would need new shoes to go dancing.
“Is this boy college-bound?” I nodded.
“Good. That’s a lot better than dating dropouts.” By “dropouts,” Mom was referring to my boyfriend, Wayne Porter. Actually, Wayne was hardly a “boy.” He was twenty, and had quit high school to work at a golf driving range. We both loved movies and each weekend we went to one together. I carried Wayne’s picture in my wallet. Even Bar conceded he was cute, although she refused to let me take a dropout to the prom.
I found a gorgeous pair of slip-ons at Nordstrom. They felt and looked great. I called them my dancing slippers, even though they had little heels. Mom frowned when she saw the price; she had to work since she and Dad divorced. But I also worked part-time at Little’s, a stationery store, and chipped in some of my savings to buy them.
At home, wearing my new slip-ons, I posed in front of our mirror as if I were in front of a movie camera. The shoes made me feel smart and helped me ignore the bump on the bridge of my nose. Bar said the bump kept my face from looking symmetrical. Actually, Bar said that about my nose more than once, mostly, I think, because I was taller and my figure was curvier than hers. So I usually forgave her for petty nitpicking.
Bar and I prepped for our double date in the Wagner’s cozy colonial house. The word fresh was the only way to describe the Wagner’s. Fresh flowers. Fresh baked cookies. Fresh carpets. Even the dog smelled fresh.
We were dressed in matching spring skirt-and-sweater sets that we had bought together: mine in persimmon, hers in a soft spring chartreuse. In addition, Bar wore her honor society medallion high up on her sweater’s collar, where it could catch the light. She liked to remind everybody that she was attending a fancy women’s college in the East — Wellesley, or something — even had a little scholarship. For me, college — in my case acting school — had to be put off. Earning some money came first.
When Bar spotted my new dancing shoes, she put on that crooked pretend smile, the one she used when she was about to say the opposite of what she meant.
“Ooh! Those look classy,” she said, raising her eyebrows. I sensed she might be annoyed that I had bought them without showing them to her first.
“Mom wanted to buy them for me,” I lied, red-faced.
“Oh, I get it,” Bar said. “It’s like my new purse in here.” She opened her closet door where seven purses hung in a row as if they were on display in a store. I couldn’t tell the “new” one from the others.
“Like it? I just had to have it.” That was Bar. She did not want to be the admirer, she wanted to be admired.
We drove on the double date to the school dance in Jerry’s Nash Rambler, Bar next to Jerry in front, Louis and me in the back. So Louis would get the right message, I moved away from him against the door.
Jerry was going to a religious seminary in the fall, but he was hardly serious. He turned everything into a joke, like calling me “Marilyn Monroe,” probably his way of making fun of my dream to be in the movies. I thought he was a goof.
“Hey, Floyd,” Jerry said, snarkily, like a little boy about to pull a fast one, “do you know why they call this car the Mayflower?”
“Why, Prebe?” Louis answered.
“Because so many Puritans came across in it.”
Bar just ignored him and turned toward me. “These car seats fold down into a bed,” she whispered as if no one else could hear. “I told Prebe that I’ll never go out alone with him in this.”
“Did you hear that, Prebe?” I laughed. “Another night wasted in the Mayflower.” But I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like in the dark on fold-down seats with Wayne, my actual boyfriend.
A week ago, when Wayne took me to an art film movie house instead of our usual drive-ins, he slipped a curved metal flask into my purse before we went inside.
“Vodka. Just in case we want a shot.”
I must have looked alarmed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “They never check purses. And, for sure, not yours. You look older.”
Afterwards we parked on a lonely road, hugging and kissing, with one sip each on the vodka flask as a warm-up, our breath frosting over the inside of the windows. I passed on a second swig, but Wayne pressed. I didn’t want him to think I was afraid, so I took it, hoping Mom would be asleep when I got home.
Later I asked myself: What parts of the night with Wayne should I tell Bar about, and what parts should I keep to myself? Wayne’s flask was still in my purse — I could show her, which seemed exciting. But I knew Bar would disapprove of everything else.
The school dance was boring. Louis barely spoke. I wished we had gone to the movies, where at least not speaking was part of the idea. Suddenly, Jerry rushed over.
“Let’s get out of here. Some guy says there’s a party over on Capitol Hill; someone’s parents are out of town. There might be some brew.”
We piled into Jerry’s Nash. On the way toward Capitol Hill, we crossed over the Ship Canal’s old drawbridge. You could feel the change when the car’s smooth hum on the pavement began to chatter on the metal grid of the bridge deck, then went back to a hum when we got to pavement on the other side.
Suddenly, Jerry pulled the Nash over to the curb.
“Wow,” he said pointing up. “Check out that thing.”
Bright red lights strung on overhead powerlines flooded the car’s windshield. In the light we could see the outline of the huge new interstate span hovering over the drawbridge that we had just crossed. The new interstate seemed to clump across the canal like a glowing red monster in a sci-fi flick.
Next to the Nash, a wire fence protecting the bridge construction site held a large lighted sign: NO ACCESS: TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED. An opening in the fence, though, was big enough to let a truck through.
Jerry rubbed his face like he had a great idea. “Hey, check out the tracks through the fence. It goes right up to the new interstate bridge. Let’s park the car in there and walk across the thing while nobody’s around. Hey, Floyd, Marilyn Monroe, what do you guys think?”
“I’m in,” Louis said.
“Why not?” I said. Maybe this would pick things up, and I could stop thinking up excuses for why I had to go home early.
Bar looked at me, not Jerry, as she shook her head.
“It may not bother you to go somewhere you’re not allowed, but it bothers me.” Her forehead wrinkled.
“OK, Wagner,” Jerry said. “Marilyn Monroe and Floyd can climb the new bridge and we’ll have the Mayflower to ourselves.” Jerry began creeping toward Bar like a perv.
“Come on, Wagner,” Louis said. “You’ll be safer on the bridge.”
“Back off, Prebe,” Bar said, then sighing, “Okay, okay.”
Jerry wedged the Nash carefully through the fence opening. The track was blocked by wooden stakes sprayed with Day-Glo paint marking stacks of lumber and iron bars, rain puddles and mounds of sand everywhere. There was no dry footpath up to the concrete lip of the bridge. Just mud, way too messy for me.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “My shoes could get wet and ruined.”
“I’ll park closer,” Jerry said.
“No you won’t,” Bar said in the warning tone of a teacher monitoring a schoolyard. “You’ll get us stuck in the mud.”
“Better yet,” Jerry said, “Floyd, let’s give Marilyn Monroe a lift onto the bridge pavement. Gotta protect those fancy shoes.”
Outside my car door the two formed a kind of sling with their arms. “C’mon, jump on,” Jerry offered.
I put my arms around their necks and jumped into their sling. “I love to be carried,” I said.
“What about me?” Bar glared, complaining loudly. “Do I get a lift? And why do you keep calling her Marilyn Monroe? Her nose is different.”
It was the second time that night that Bar upset me. When we were in the ladies’ room at the dance, I had shown her Wayne’s vodka flask in my purse. Bar had waggled her finger at me, smiling in her crooked pretend way. “Naughty, naughty,” she had said, and I’d known right away it was a mistake to let her see Wayne’s flask.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Mike Cohen
